www.natashayong.com

On recommendation by Ming, our pre-Halloween dinner ended up at a very wholesome crab restaurant at a housing block corner of Ang Mo Kio Ave 3 - Mellben Seafood. Ming commented about the popularity of the place and their specialty dish - Claypot Crab Bee Hoon. It was pouring buckets and we were hoping that the usual long queue will not be present. But despite the humongous downpour we still needed to join a line and waited about an hour before dinner was served.

Fortunately, the dishes did not disappoint. Unfortunately, they ran out of large crabs, so we had to substitute for 2 smaller crabs per crab dish. Wasn't quite the same. What I also didn't like was that prices for the dishes are not labeled on the menu. I can understand that crabs go by the daily market price, but other standard dishes have a... standard price...


The reason for the wait - Claypot Crab Bee Hoon. Strong flavored stock with added milk. Overall taste was robust and enjoyable with good texture of the Chor (thick) bee hoon


The stock was so good we order an extra serving of soup (S$3) and bee hoon (another S$3) foregoing rice. But wait... Ming had a bowl rice! Gosh he ate a lot!


The Chili Crab proved itself no less inferior than the more popular Claypot Crab Bee Hoon counterpart. The thick chili gravy could be more spicy for me. Very decent in taste even when compared to Jumbo Seafood

An entire day away from work with the leading gurus in Adobe Photoshop presenting at the Adobe Photoshop World 2009 should deliver some mind blowing state of the art tips and tricks on the what I consider as the best design tool; but I felt the deliverables fell short. The focus was on sharing 20 years of Photoshop and indeed the product has grown.

Adobe flew in Senior Creative Director, Russell Brown and Senior Sales Manager, Creative Solutions, Michael Stoddart. Those in the industry will certainly know Brown in the tv.adobe.com channel and the Russell Brown Show. His in-depth design knowledge and zany presentation style has won him an Emmy Award as an instructor. He was definitely entertaining to catch live.

Having attended the Adobe CS4 Launch in 2008, I was expecting this event to be an add on to what I've picked up last year. It was fantastic to have had the 1st look at all those cool CS4 new features, it would have been perfect to see them applied in REAL situations. Instead a lot of tips & tricks presented were old school. Yet the audience still went Woooo and Arhhh! Seriously people... are you new in the industry?!?!

The day has finally arrived. Yahoo! GeoCities will officially shut their web hosting service on 26 October 2009. For many who grew up with the web in the 90s (talking about myself here) building a user-created homepage for topical communities on GeoCities was as close as it got to social networks. Those were the days before Twitter, before Facebook, before MySpace... even before Friendster!

My very 1st homepage was built on GeoCities, back in my poly days. Those were the days where we chucked along on a 486mhz computer and 56.6K modems had the fastest connection! You'd find my dude Kenny and myself at the computer stations building our websites on a Netscape browser with Notepad! Those 1st few lines of HTML codes... I remembered building portfolio pages featuring our trilogy animation "The Adventures of Coco & Molly". I really have to dig through my archives if I kept any of those web content. They've become very sentimental materials.

I went on to revamp my portfolio website (also on GeoCities) later in uni with a cleaner design in the now extremely dated "frames" structure.


Landing page of the portfolio website www.geocities.com/natashayong

One of these days, I will mix good drinks. I need to invest in a good shaker, a solid blender for ice, a variety of serving glasses, figure a way to make lots of ice cubes...

Peach Daiquiris: Prepare Daiquiris as directed, except use half of a 6-ounce can (1/3 cup) frozen limeade or lemonade concentrate. Add 3 ripe medium peaches, peeled, pitted, and cut up (1 1/2 cups) or 1 1/2 cups frozen unsweetened peach slices. If desired, add 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar. Makes 8 servings (about 4 ounces each).

Frozen Margaritas: In a blender container, combine one 6-ounce can frozen limeade concentrate, 2/3 cup tequila, and 1/2 cup orange liqueur. Cover and blend until smooth. With blender running, add 4 cups ice cubes, 1 at a time, through opening in lid. Blend until slushy. Serve in salt-rimmed glasses. Garnish with lime slices, if desired. Makes 8 (4-ounce) servings.

Look what came into the mail today - A Google Wave Invitation for a test run on the beta platform!


Always good to have friends in Google

Straits Times - The Face Of Hunger Chart

I set up the Food and Drinks category with the intention to showcase interesting experiences in the culinary world. Great tasting food offering that delights the taste buds. Today, I read about World Food Day (16 October) and is reminded that while I belong to the part of the world that goes to bed (often) with an uncomfortably full belly, a billion others go hungry today and every day.

We can't do as much about the floods, the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the typhoons that hit our lands. It's deadly impact causing mayhem and devastation. Mother nature is at work. But we can definitely do something about a baby that dies in the arms of his mother; simply because he has nothing to eat for days. A child malnourished, weighing as much as new born kitten, skin wrapped around bones...

There is little debate that it is right to feed the hungry from starvation.

CNet's How to Guide to Upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7

I am pretty sure I know where my bonus is going. I've held on to the Window XP operating system (by passing all the Vista crap) and will (hopefully) be making the switch to Windows 7 directly. When it comes to an operating system, I am not too adventurous. Upgrading was in my mind and that was at least 3 years ago! Gosh! I can be REALLY patient!

This is pretty brilliant. Have requested the Google Singapore folks for a Wave account. Let's see if they can whip up something for me.

Over our tandoori dinner at Little India on Monday night, I shared with the girls what I still think is director Terry Gilliam's finest film to date; "Brazil".



Deep in the darkly-humoured core of the film are themes of
- consumerism as a totalitarian society's prescribed lulling distraction from its inherent inhumanity

- meaningless considerations of status and vanity over personal happiness and well-being (cosmetic surgeries, addiction to fashion, obsession to look young and beautiful)

- surviving in a vast, impersonal, and indifferent social structure

- absurdity of the anonymous, ritualized, and soulless machinery that make up the absurd necessities of adult life in modern society

Back in 1985, few films challenged such themes with such dark tragicomic twists. In a whimsical sci-fi way, the film presents Gilliam's messages in prefect imagery and symbolism. Thought-provoking, profound and definitely not for everyone.

It's an annual affair to check out Little India every Deepavali. It's the festival of lights where the streets of Serangoon and Racecourse Road glitters in shinning colours. It's the smell of everything Indian... Curries, Tandooris, Jasmine, Masala, Incense... Nostalgic Indian tunes playing from shop houses from eon years ago. For your own safety (unless you want to be compressed into a tin of sardines) don't go anywhere near the place during the weekends. I actually didn't realise this weekend will be the celebrations for Deepavali!

Since our last meet up barely a month back at Bedrock Steak House for the humongous Tomahawk - a lot has happened. There were some hiccups at work for Celeste, then the West Sumatra earthquake that shook down her hometown in Padang. Wendy not being able to cope with her tourism module at school and myself with the ever increasing workload at the office... sigh... we needed one of those girls talk night...


Butter Chicken Curry, Masala Chicken Curry and Tandoori Chicken

I've been missing The Pie-Maker and Dead Girl since I completed both seasons of "Pushing Daisies" at the beginning of the month. It's been a long time since I watched a TV series (Sci-Fi not included) with such imagination, colour, witty lines and sincere character relationships. I agree with many who claimed that stories lack depth - but it was a happy show. I've been sitting on the series for way too long and loved it on the pilot episode. I was happy to take my sweet time to savour the offerings of the production.

Testing the theory that "something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better".


Piano stairs
We often hear "Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better". Few people actually follow that advice. The Fun Theory wanted to get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do. 66% more people then normal chose the stairs over the escalator!


The world's deepest bin
Getting more people to throw rubbish into the bin, rather than onto the ground. This bin collected 41kg more trash then the normal bin just a distance away.

What I call putting creativity to good use.

The food business is a competitive and tough one. Having made the switch from our usual game stalls to set up Mike Lee Burgers, Corn Cup, Pop Corn, Cotton Candy & Hannah Painting proved to be a healthy change. Breaking away from our usual mold. For once we were fighting with all the seasoned aunties, whipping up all sorts of delightful dishes you can expect at a Food & Fun Fair.

The 'fun' element was noticeably missing and highlighted to us by parents and kids alike. When asked "Where are the game stalls?", we had to turn them away saying "This year there is none! The youth are selling food!" A couple of kids walked away looking disappointed and while we had our tasks at hand to complete, next year we will probably bring games back.


The CORN people: Kim, Annette & myself on Corn Cup and Valy at the Pop Corn. His magic hands help sell quite a bit of our corn!


Jock twirling up a cotton candy

Remember Fredrik Larsson who played unplugged to 'Wind Waker' from 'The Legends of Zelda'?
Check out Pomplamoose. They're cool, trust me... but got a darn weird band name... Pomplamoose...


Still soaking in all the Beyoncé action


Nataly and Jack's got great humour in Earth, Wind & Fire's "September"

The annual St. Teresa Feast Day Food & Fun Fair happens this weekend.
Following up from the Feast Day Cook Out, we have confirmed these sale of food.
We've all been busy putting everything together and bringing the equipments down to the fair ground. Praying for good weather and a jolly time with the sales :)


Mike Lee’s Burgers (Better then Ramly!)


Corn Cup (Juicier then those at the Pasa Malam!)